They're not "illegal guns." They're "undocumented firearms."

At Instapundit, goofing on the Democratic debate.

Thanks to Attila Girl.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (7)
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If you've been keeping track of the Democrats' self-immolation over the issue of race during the past week, you know that the candidates have been trying to get their supporters to knock it off. Today's Washington Post has a great article with quotes from the people still pouring gasoline on the flames, including a bizarre quote from Charlie Rangel:

The people who are injecting race into the campaign are overanalyzing poorly worded statements or meaningless slips, said House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.), a Clinton supporter who is African American.

"I'm angry because I'm looking for the white people that are insulting me, and I can't find them," Rangel said.

This one could have used some more context. Is he really saying what I think he's saying?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:23 AM | Comments (31)
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Heh.

This in response to a pesky federal judge's ruling that the use of sonar violated the Coastal Zone Management Act, and would have required the Navy to observe a 12 mile "no sonar zone" along the California coastline. They also would have been required to post lookouts to watch for whales, and shut down sonar when they're spotted within 2,200 yards (presumably outside the "no sonar at all within 12 miles of the coast" rule).

But Bush being the tyrant that he is prone to be swatted aside the judge's ruling by Executive Fiat™.

Complying with the environmental law would "undermine the Navy's ability to conduct realistic training exercises that are necessary to ensure the combat effectiveness of carrier and expeditionary strike groups," Bush said.

The pending outcry from environmentalists will be so creamy rich I'll want to dip my balls in it.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 07:40 AM | Comments (38)
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This is getting ri-friggin'-diculous.

Craig is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. The ACLU on Tuesday filed a brief supporting the Idaho Republican.

The ACLU wrote that a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms "have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

You legal types can have at it if you wish. I'll just be over here doing Lysol shots.

Thanks to John at Stop The ACLU.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:43 AM | Comments (49)
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Unfortunately outside Michigan she's not facing "Uncommitted" again.

Shocking development: Blacks have deserted Hillary for Obama.

Was her strategy really nothing more than hoping blacks would continue to support her? If so, I think she's going to need a new one.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 PM | Comments (56)
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After years of study, the FDA has announced that food from cloned animals is safe to eat. It will not require disclosure requirements or labeling for food in supermarkets that comes from clones, although there is no chance of that type of thing happening in the near future:

In practice, it will be years before foods from clones make their way to store shelves in appreciable quantities, in part because the clones themselves are too valuable to slaughter or milk. Instead, the pricey animals -- replicas of some of the finest farm animals ever born -- will be used primarily as breeding stock to create what proponents say will be a new generation of superior farm animals.

I don't have a problem with the idea, and I'd eat cloned food without flinching. But the study and its announcement have led to many objections, the best of which I've found is from Zelig Golden at the Jew and the Carrot. I encourage you to click over and read it, but I will summarize his points.

First, cloned animals have not actually been proven to be safe. The FDA only looked at whether the live animals appear to be healthy (its usual method of determining if food will be safe to eat). It did not collect any data on unusual hormone or antibiotics levels in the animals.

I've never really understood the recent fad for hormone and drug-free meat, but when it comes to animals that have themselves been cloned, this will be an important issue. At present, when producers are only planning on sending descendants of clones to the supermarket aisle, the hormones and antibiotics in the animals will be the same as in the rest of the herd. The cloning will have no unusual impact at that level.

Second, cloning is an "animal welfare issue." I don't get this objection at all, so I'll just reproduce Golden (get it? "Reproduce Golden"!?):

Animal cloning represents a fundamental change in our relationship with animals. Instead of humans assisting or acting as midwives in animal reproduction, cloning allows humans to become wholesale creators of genetic “replicas” of existing animals.

No problem from me; they're a food source, not a companion. But some may care.

Third, the public and religious leaders oppose cloned food or cloning in general. The FDA does not take that type of thing into account when it determines if food is safe, nor should it, in my opinion.

Fourth, Golden fears that cloning puts a "few large corporations" in control of our food supply. That's a little much for me to believe, and the Monsanto boogey-man makes an appearance in Golden's argument. I do agree with him that courts and the U.S. patent office have been far too willing to hand out patents for organisms. But that's a reason to pass legislation to fix the courts and the PTO, not to oppose cloning.

Finally, Golden asks a question that doesn't impact me personally, but which I'm curious about the answer: "Is meat from cloned animals kosher?" He doesn't know the answer to that one, but I'm genuinely curious.

Elsewhere, I've seen one other objection raised: it reduces genetic diversity in the cloned species. As I said then, IÂ’m not too concerned about genetic diversity in bovine populations or other food animals. We're not going to ever expect them to sustain a population in the wild.

What do you think? I've tucked a poll into the extended entry.

UPDATE: LauraW. directs me to the news that we're already eating meat from the offspring of clones and don't even know it.

Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies reportedly conceded Tuesday that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply, despite a years-old request by the FDA to keep them off the market pending completion of the agency's safety report.

At least one Kansas cattle producer also reportedly disclosed Tuesday that he has openly sold semen from prize-winning clones to many U.S. meat producers in the past few years, and that he is certain he is not alone.

"This is a fairy tale that this technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain," Donald Coover, a Galesburg cattleman and veterinarian who has a specialty cattle semen business, was quoted as saying. "Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about, or they're not being honest."

Joke's on you! That Big Mac is made from mutant-meat! (As if we didn't already know that.) more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:17 PM | Comments (51)
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For the most part, the CNN exit polls are uninformative. The various categories in which Romney leads among all options merely reflect the fact that he was the most popular candidate, something we obviously already know from the official results. More than that, it means that many of the various questions do not break down into factors which influenced the electorate to choose one candidate over another.¹

However, there are a few interesting findings for each candidate: more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:24 PM | Comments (13)
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Sounds good. The initial review is spoiler free; spoilers are hidden in white font after that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 PM | Comments (20)
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I said, "Heh."

Also Heh. And also kinda hot.

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 PM | Comments (11)
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By starting his victory speech about six seconds after McCain had started his concession.

McCain says they had an agreement about timing.

Was it:

accidental?

deliberate?

or

both deliberate and fucking awesome?

McCain -- chill. I think you've been on TV plenty, Buddy.

Oh: And McCain cut off Huckabee's speech, too, so...

Fred's Campaign Manager On Huckster, McVain:

Mike Huckabee's campaign to be John McCain's Vice President has hit a snag. He has gone from the mid-thirties in Iowa to 11% in New Hampshire and now about 15% in Michigan.

On higher taxes and looser immigration, Huckabee has been done his best these past few weeks to mimic McCain. But this is nothing new. In fact, while John McCain was leading the Senate charge to grant amnesty for illegal immigrants, Mike Huckabee was one of the loudest cheerleaders. And at the same time McCain was voting against the Bush tax cuts, Huckabee was in Arkansas increasing taxes some 21 times.

Hannity kept asking Fred about attacking McCain and he seems to at least know what his supporters, and would-be supporters, are craving.

Incidentally, Brit Hume actually addressed what he intended with his badgering on the commanders' response to the Iranian speedboat harassment. I could have sworn for one moment at least he was a reader, or at least had had my criticism of that question mentioned to him.

What was he aiming for? Well, not much. He just says he thought at least one candidate would have said the commanders should have opened fire and/or the ROEs need to be loosened up to allow them to fire. But he seemed to offer that explanation out of nowhere.

Posted by: Ace at 07:22 PM | Comments (55)
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